


The sound of your voice carries me home

by StarberryCupcake



Category: Dragon Ball
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Non-Graphic Violence, Parenthood, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-27
Updated: 2018-09-27
Packaged: 2019-07-18 09:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16115210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarberryCupcake/pseuds/StarberryCupcake
Summary: “Bad things...make Saiyans stronger”The phrase, coming out of her son’s lips, hung in the air between them like a curse nobody dared to say out loud.Two times Vegeta overheard Bulma’s conversations with others and one time he started one with her himself.





	The sound of your voice carries me home

**Author's Note:**

> I seem to have a thing for materializing DB fics in short periods of time, who would have thought. This is set partly after the Cell Games and partly after the end of Super. Warnings for cursing, because this is a Vegebul fic, so it's kind of mandatory, and brief mentions of past torture.

“Bulma, can I ask you a...personal question?”

Krillin knew that she had seen something coming. They were friends, yes, but it wasn’t usual for him to stay behind after gatherings. That was Yamcha’s tiresome nature more so than his.

He thought they had grown closer during the Namek ordeal. They both agreed it had been The Worst adventure of their lives, for different reasons. He had been blown to pieces, her body was switched with a frog’s and appropriated by a mercenary captain, not counting the issues they had to go through to get there in the first place, even before seeing Frieza.

Still, personal questions had never been their forte, especially what he was about to ask her. But he was desperate. And the thought of confiding on his guy friends with something as delicate as this was not a pleasant one.

“If it has anything to do with the Dragon Radar,” she was in the kitchen, putting away the dishes, promising she'd deal with them later, which probably meant that her mom was to do it as she retreated to the isolation of her lab “I’m gonna have to know in advance what you guys screwed up this time because…”

“No, it’s not…” Krillin hesitated “I need advice”

“Well, that’s...unusual” she turned at that, frowning in that way she did when she wanted to figure something out “Do you need to repair that broken down ship of yours? because I think it’s better to buy a new one...”

“I’ll have you know that she’s a classic and no, it’s…” he looked around before saying it, choosing to lower his tone, just in case “ _relationship_ advice”

Krillin’s relationship with Eighteen had been getting more personal as months went by. He had always known it to be his intention, he didn’t want it to be casual.

His friends assumed that it was ephemeral, some sort of misplaced infatuation born from the thrill of adrenaline. Tien thought it was preposterous, Yamacha that it was ridiculous when there were “so many other less complicated fish in the sea”, Roshi was... _himself_ and Piccolo…

Piccolo would probably treat him with some empathy if he told him, despite him not being romantically or sexually inclined, he was more understanding than they gave him credit for, but Krillin wasn’t brave enough to go meet Piccolo for advice. In any front.

Krillin knew he didn’t want just casual with Eighteen. After risking his life for her over and over, he was pretty positive about that. He knew she wasn’t ready for commitment and accepted whatever terms she deemed appropriate, but he had been honest to her about how deep his feelings went. And she didn’t seem to be distressed about it.

She hadn’t told him how she felt yet, but he could wait. Still, there was something he needed to discuss with someone and he was sure that Bulma was the only person who could understand.

She wasn’t less scary than Piccolo though.

Bulma looked at him for what Krillin felt like a full minute before sighing, tuning around, grabbing a bottle of Malbec from the counter and two clean wine glasses, sitting down and putting them on the kitchen table, offering him to join her.

“If you’re asking _me_ , you’re more fucked than I thought…” she said, as she uncorked the bottle with an ease that came from vast experience.

“I just think you’re the only one who can understand me…” he sat, somewhat hesitantly, and took the offered glass.

“In which way could I…” she began protesting but he stopped her.

“Because you’re also in a relationship with someone who was...” he looked up then, at her eyes, trying to convey his worry “on the _other side_ of our battles”

Bulma held his stare for a while and then drowned the glass in one go. Well, then.

“I want to know how you deal with...wondering” Krillin insisted, looking down again.

“Wondering?” she refilled her glass, clearly not drunk enough for the current conversation.

“Wondering if he’ll ever…” Krillin looked for the words, fidgeting with the glass in his hands “if he’ll ever feel the need to go back to how he used to be”

Bulma’s silence made him look up again. She was holding the glass in her hands, staring at its content, transfixed by the deep red that brought memories of battles past.

“You can’t go down that road, Krillin” she said, finally, not looking at him.

“What...which road?”

“Potential guilt” she looked up at him, serious “You’re thinking that you might do something to trigger her”

“I…” he hadn’t thought about it in depth but there was indeed a nagging feeling of dread.

“You can’t live like that, bud, believe me” she took a sip from her glass before continuing “You are a nice guy, Krillin, you won’t purposefully do anything to tip her to the other side and if she ever does, it won’t be your fault”

“But what if she does?” he asked, disoriented.

“You’ll have to deal with that _when_ it happens”

“But how can I know…” he felt trapped in a spiral that was opening to swallow him and gripped the glass as if it could keep him intact.

“You _won’t_ know” she left her glass on the table and extended her hand, touching his “You’ll wonder but you won’t ever know because there are things you and I can’t understand about what they’ve been through”

He looked at her, feeling the empathy in her deep blue eyes.

“We can listen and understand and try to see things their way but there’s an edge we can’t reach and that’s as far as we can go” she smiled, tentatively “All we can do is be there for them if they need us and accept that we don’t have all the answers”

“Learning to live with the uncertainty, you mean” he smiled back, awkwardly.

“And that’s coming from someone who despises not knowing stuff” she let his hand go and took another sip from her glass “It’s a tough order but you’ll be the one to judge if it’s worth it in the long run”

Krillin felt the dread dissipating as he imagined what a future with Eighteen would be like. What it’d be to just have her there as he woke up, every morning, looking at him as she did, with those eyes that said that the world had meant nothing until she found he was in it.

“Is it worth all that, for you?” he asked her, an honest smile adorning his face.  

“Buddy, your relationship with Eighteen has nothing to do with my relationship with Vegeta” she laughed but it felt forced.

He frowned.

“How so?”

“Well, for starters, it’s obvious that you love each other” she took the rest of the wine in her glass as she finished the sentence.

“Oh, please, Bulma, don’t try to tell me you don’t love Vegeta because I know full well…”

She turned to him with a frown. Her eyes were cold and serious, her demeanor the one she used when they were being insolently dense about something she was trying to explain.

“Oh…” he gulped, sensing a knot in his throat and felt the need to start drinking that damn wine “you mean he doesn’t...he doesn’t love you back?”

She shrugged, attempting a nonchalance that would have been more convincing a couple of glasses of wine prior.

“It’s...complicated” she served herself some more and it looked like the bottle wasn’t going to survive their entire conversation.

“Then why…”

“Why what?” she sounded impatient and he knew he was walking on thin ice.

“Doesn’t it hurt you?” he asked anyway, because they _were_ friends, after all, and he _cared_ “To have him around if he doesn’t...reciprocate?”

Bulma became still and remained silent. Her face was doing that thing it did when she was attempting to translate a very complex explanation to their ‘simple fighter-minds’.

“I can’t manipulate his feelings, Krillin, I can only be accountable for mine”

“But he…”

“He left, many times, still does sometimes,” she looked at the glass again, avoiding his gaze “every one of those I think it’s the last and that I won’t see him again, every one of those he returns”

“Well, that means something, doesn’t it?” he argued “That he comes back to you?”

“Yeah, maybe it means that he has a nice spot to train with my mom catering to his every whim, or that he likes to be close to where Goku will eventually come back to, if he ever does, or that he’s curious to see his own son grow up...there’s plenty of reasons for him to return that have nothing to do with me”

“And you don’t...confront him?”

There was something Krillin couldn’t conceive and it was Bulma not accosting someone for an explanation if she deserved one. He didn’t understand how someone like her, one of the fiercest people he knew, someone who would talk back to enemies they feared if she had to, didn’t go to Vegeta and ask him what the hell he wanted from her. Give him and ultimatum. Kick him out, if need be.

Her and Chi Chi were probably their two strongest people, ki be damned.

“I have one rule, Krillin, when it comes to him” she sounded more sober, more honest than he had heard her in the entire conversation.

Krillin knew, just by her demeanor, that she hadn’t shared this with anyone else but she needed to. He saw in her eyes the same pain he had, the grief of needing your best friend and him being gone.

“You’ll find out too, sooner than later, what’s her line,” she continued, looking straight at him “the line you will know lies in Eighteen’s heart and that you’ll set yourself not to cross because you’ll know that’d hurt her, not anger her but _harm_ her”

Krillin nodded briefly, in understanding.

“For Vegeta, that line is captivity”

She looked at him with such ferocity that she didn’t have to punctuate the obvious demand, that whatever she was to tell him couldn’t be repeated elsewhere again.

“I’ll never be able to force him to stay because that’s what he’s been doing for as long as he’s lived and if he’s going to find a home somewhere, it’ll be of his own choosing and not because I force it upon him”

She was stern, serious, and Krillin noticed once more the authority she had always had over them all, fighting skills or not.

“I would never make him feel like he’s trapped, if he feels so with Trunks, that’s his responsibility for being half of the input, but when it comes to me...he can go and do as he pleases and my feelings won’t be used as a chain to keep him locked”

She stopped then and took another more modest sip of wine.

“So you don’t ask because you don’t want to force your feelings on him” Krillin took one as well.

“He knows how I feel and I don’t mind him knowing” she continued, less severe “My line is that he doesn’t purposely harm us, especially Trunks, that he doesn’t destroy us in a stupid attempt to destroy himself”

She frowned, as if she was seeing into the future, glimpsing that there was something about Vegeta that was not going to be resolved until he faced himself.

“If he finds a home with us, I want it to be because he feels like it is one, not because I impose a role on him or I chain him with my feelings”

Krillin saw the depth in her stare and understood what those past years had been for her. He had never liked the comments his friends made behind her back, questioning her choices, but he had judged her internally. He felt that what she had done with Vegeta was reckless, having his kid, getting involved, when Vegeta was a ticking time bomb of issues that could pull all of them down, when he wasn’t even letting go of his aim to defeat Goku.

But for all he judged, he knew Bulma was the smartest of them all, and every choice she made she lived with knowingly. Whether Trunks had been a surprise or not, she had never seen her motherhood or her relationship with Vegeta as anything but the chaos it actually was. She didn’t attempt to disguise them as a happy normal family, she knew full well what she was getting herself into and lived with that reality every day.

But, more than anything, Bulma loved Vegeta. Even if most of his friends said it had been just physical attraction, they had said the same about him and Eighteen.

He looked at her with the same honesty she had given him. The same silent pact.

“I think hers is trust” he said, serious “I think that, after what she has been through, she needs loyalty, someone who doesn’t betray her” he smiled “Who loves her for who she is”

Bulma smiled back, understanding.

“Then she’s safe with you” she knocked her glass against his in a sloppy toast “Make her happy, Krillin, you both deserve it”

They talked about this and that until they finished the bottle. He bid Bulma farewell and exited the kitchen through the back door.

He hadn’t felt his ki before, either Krillin had been too distracted and tipsy or he had been hiding it. He was in the shadows, against the wall, an extension of the darkness.

He thought it was best to remain silent, pretend he hadn’t noticed him. If Vegeta had heard them, the ball was on his ballpark then. Krillin knew, as he departed, that their former enemy wasn’t going anywhere, not anymore.

The next morning, as Eighteen arrived to see him in Kame House, he was slightly hungover but more clear headed than he had been before. When he talked to her about loyalty and she kissed him deeply, gratefully, he knew it was a matter of time until he proposed.

* * *

Bra was asleep. _Finally_. Her daughter’s unprecedented energy was a cruel reminder of how old she was for this shit. But then again, she loved her deeply.

She found Trunks sitting on his bed and, a polar opposite to her daughter, trying not to fall asleep with all his might.

“You look tired, kid” she sat next to him on the bed and put an arm around his shoulders “You didn’t have to wait for me, you know how Bra is with her sleeping schedule”

The baby was close to her first year and Bulma felt her family had aged tenfold the amount with how she had them all over the place. That tiny yet mighty Saiyan princess that she was.

“I didn’t want you to forget” he said between yawns.

She knew exactly what he meant and smiled. He didn’t want her to forget to say goodnight. The big baby.

“I thought you were telling Goten the other day that you were too old for goodnight hugs” she reminded him with a smirk.

“Yeah but…” he yawned again “What if you forgot me?”

“How could I forget you, bean?” she asked squeezing him for good measure.

“I don’t know…” he frowned “I didn’t wanna tell you in front…”

“In front of your father?” she guessed, kindly.

“I don’t want him to think I’m not strong” he leaned his head on her arm and she marveled at how fast he was growing “He says you coddle me too much but…”

He was fidgeting with his hands nervously and she waited for him to continue.

“I just don’t want you and dad to forget me because I’m not like them”

That stopped her.

She was waiting for a conversation about Bra and his father, about why he was different around her than he had been around him. But the plural surprised her.

“Who’re _them_ , sweetheart?” she asked tentatively.

“Bra and…” he grabbed the blanket, worried “And the other me”

This was new. It dawned on Bulma that she hadn’t really talked about the other Trunks with him. She had explained, sort of, and he had been able to talk to him well enough to accept him, but they had moved on to the the next impending doomsday soon after and she let it pass.

It had affected her and Vegeta, the whole ordeal with Future Trunks, but she didn’t think of how it had affected her son.

“Is there something that worries you about him?” she tried to convey more certainty than she felt. 

How much should Trunks know about the perils the other one had faced? About how they met him when he hadn't been born? About the mess her and Vegeta had been when they had him?

“I don’t think…” he started and stalled in the way she did when she tried to explain something complicated to her friends “I don’t think I’ll be like him”

There was a lot to unpack there and Bulma didn’t even know where to start.

“You mean when you grow up?” she played with his hair and knew there was something off the moment he didn’t complain or pull back with the demonstration of affection.

“Yeah”

“How can you be sure, kiddo?” she turned to him “It hasn’t happened yet”

Trunks frowned in that way that was so very Vegeta, which used to hurt her when he was a baby and his father was nowhere to be found.

“Remember that experiment you did that exploded half of the lab and dad got mad?” Trunks looked at her, his hands less shaky than before.

“It wasn’t _half_ the lab, your father exaggerates….”

“Do you remember what you said had gone wrong?” he continued, ignoring her comment “About the variables?”

Bulma tried to remember. She had messed up more times than her son was aware of and pinpointing one of those times was a bit difficult.

“That they changed?” she guessed, still confused.

“Yeah, you said that the variables were too different and you weren’t able to predict the result” he turned his whole body to her, engrossed in the explanation “And I asked you what variables were and you said that they were things that affected the experiment, things on the outside, and they were too many to predict”

Bulma was, on the one hand, extremely impressed at how her son had saved that information and how he had understood her train of thought so easily. On the other, she had no idea where this was going.

“So what does that mean for you and the other Trunks?” she crossed her arms, unwilling to patronize her son’s explanation and taking it as seriously as she would a company meeting.

“I think that our variables will make us different grown ups” he continued “I didn’t grow up alone and I have all of you to help me”

There was despair in his expression and Bulma was at a loss again.

“And that is a _bad_ thing?” she cocked an eyebrow.

“No!” he waved his hands exaggeratedly “I don’t mean that it’s bad! It’s _good_! It’s just that…”

Bulma looked at him, patiently. She wanted very much to hug him and cuddle his pain away but her son was growing up and this conversation deserved more than that. She wanted to understand him.

“Bad things...make Saiyans stronger”

The phrase, coming out of her son’s lips, hung in the air between them like a curse nobody dared to say out loud.

She remembered Goku, exiled to a planet with instructions to destroy, lost in his own skin, being the reason for his own grandfather’s death.

She remembered Vegeta, enslaved since childhood and tortured systematically in the regime of a tyrant.

She remembered Gohan, pushed to the limits of his capacity, his father having sacrificed himself in vain and him being the only one able to save the Earth.

She remembered her son from that other future, alone and in pain, the only survivor of a legacy of cursed soldiers destined to defend their home.

Bulma looked at her son, her baby boy, his serious eyes so much like hers, his stoic frown so much like his father’s. Everything he didn’t know about the past, he was starting to guess. And he felt compelled to question his happiness in exchange of power to prove himself.

She didn’t know if this was a conversation for her to have with him. Maybe Vegeta would be more suitable to understand all of this. To actually explain what it meant to be a Saiyan Prince to his heir.

But Trunks wasn’t completely Saiyan. And that other part of him was hers to teach to.

“Listen, Trunks” she took his hands in hers, her eyes serious and determined “You are your own person”

His curious frown told her he was already unconvinced about her speech but he was willing to grant her time to elaborate. She felt as if she was in a press conference. When had this kid become so mature?

“You and Goten aren’t your parents, nor does anyone intend you to be” she continued “Your circumstances...your _variables_ changed because your parents fought for them to change, they fought for you to have the chance to live in peace”

She smiled, still holding his hands.

“Power comes from many places and pain and turmoil aren’t the only ways to learn” she tried to convey as much certainty as she could muster “While it’s incredibly smart and very great of you to understand that different people have different opportunities and that you have been lucky to have what you do, you also can’t force yourself onto pain because you want to be stronger...especially if you just want to do so to make someone proud”

“I never said…”

“You want _him_ to be proud of you, Trunks” she hugged him then, couldn’t help it anymore “You’ve always wanted that, and believe me he understands how you feel...but don’t think that we’d rather have you be anyone else but yourself, we’re proud of you for who you _are_ ”

He huffed, unconvinced.

“You should ask him, though” she added, still holding him “Ask you father about it”

“Yeah, no, thanks”

“Trunks…”

“I _can’t_ ”

“Why not?”

“I told you already!” he distanced himself from her embrace, frowning “I can’t be weak in front of him” his voice was softer at that, barely a whisper.

“Why, sweetie?”

She was ready to be hit with something painful, yet she was dreading it at the same time.

“Because...well because he…” Trunks closed his eyes, shut them tight, his fists closed strongly “Because that’s all I have”

Bulma’s throat was a knot and she waited for him to continue, thanking that his eyes were closed and he couldn’t see her expression.

“The other Trunks has his respect, he sees him as an equal” he continued, still closed off “Bra has his love, she’s his Princess” he crossed his arms, fists still closed tight “Then there’s Cabba who he sees as his apprentice, worthy of being taught...”

He bit his lip in an effort to keep tears in and it broke Bulma’s heart.

“If I’m weak in front of him, if I dishonor him, I’ll lose the little bit of dad that I get for myself”

Bulma’s eyes were at their limit, but she couldn’t cry. Not in front of him, he couldn’t see her break.

She had never intended to push Vegeta further than what he was willing to give but she had asked him to promise that they would never let Trunks feel left out. She knew Trunks’s relationship with Vegeta was difficult, that it wasn’t easy for them to fit together, but she couldn’t let Vegeta’s inaction make Trunks feel worthless.

“You’re the most brilliant, bravest little kid I know” she said, her voice not as strong as she would have wanted “And if your father isn’t a complete asshat, he thinks the same”

“You think so?” his eyes illuminated with hope.

“You could never dishonor him, baby” she hugged him again “I promise”

Trunks fell asleep in her arms, something he hadn’t done in ages. Once Bulma was out of the room, leaving him tucked properly in bed, she broke down in tears in the hallway.

How long had he felt this way? How many years growing to see himself unable to reach the ideal he felt Vegeta wanted him to be? How badly had the arrival of his future self shaken his own identity? How badly had they fucked up as parents and how could they fix it?

She felt his hand on her shoulder. She was sitting on the floor, her back to the wall, she had unknowingly let herself fall, and he was crouching in front of her, tentatively touching her as he did when he wanted to comfort her but knew he was partly the reason why she needed the comfort in the first place.

“I’ll talk to him in the morning” he said, reassuring “I promise”

She looked at him, frowning, tears in her eyes and fear for the boy they had brought to the world in the midst of chaos and destruction, a boy who had seen the fate of the Earth too close and still felt he hadn’t suffered enough to be good for him.

“I’m sorry” he said, and he looked just like she felt, just as guilty and lost “I didn’t mean…”

“Do you love him?” she asked him and she had never been more afraid to ask.

Whether he loved her or not, she could deal with, but this was more important. This was _crucial_.

“ _Of course_ I do” he sentenced, as if there was no other possibility.

“Good” she said, drying her tears with the back of her hand “Then _tell him_ ”

The next morning, as she was about to enter the kitchen, she stopped far enough not to interrupt as she glimpsed at them.

She realized then how much taller Trunks had become, as her husband hugged him, Vegeta’s eyes dangerously close to tears, Trunk’s face hidden in his father’s shirt, his fists holding the man he idolized as if there was nothing he wanted more than for him to remain by his side.

The last time they hugged like that, Trunks had lost him. This time, Vegeta wasn’t going anywhere.

With a smile, Bulma decided that her morning coffee could wait, and turned around to see how her daughter was doing.

* * *

She was late again. It was preposterous.

Their daughter was normalizing her sleeping schedule ( _finally_ ) so Bulma had started to retreat to the lab at night as she used to.

Which was all well and good until it was 5 am and she hadn’t slept, knowing that she had a meeting the next day at 8. Or when she ended up so exhausted and food deprived that she _passed out_ in the living room when standing up from playing with Bra on her mat. Or when Trunks worried as he sat for dinner and noticed her absence, his frown a proof of him understanding the consequences of her exhaustion, because that brat was smarter than them both put together.  

Vegeta had stopped himself before calling her out on it because it normally backfired. Who was he, “The Training Machine”, as she put it, to tell her when to stop?

But he was worried. And as she made her way through the darkness, clumsily attempting to pass unnoticed towards the en-suite bathroom, he was going to tell her just how much.

“What time do you think it is?!” he barked, making out her shape in the dark room with his heightened senses.

“For Kami’s sakes!” she turned on the lights with a remote switch she had in her pocket “Vegeta! Are you trying to give me a heart attack?!”

“You’re doing a good job on that yourself” he sneered from his spot on the couch they had near the window “You don’t need _me_ to push you to an untimely demise”

She sighed exaggeratedly, combing her short hair out of her face with her greasy hand.

“Aren’t you the drama king?” she retorted “I was just working late, as I do, as I’ve done for as long as you’ve known me”

“You’re pushing yourself too hard”

“Look who’s talking!” _there_ it was “You don’t have the right to judge _when_ I’m at my limit”

“Yes, well, your son is worried too and I reckon he does have the right” he stood, arms crossed, glaring at her.

“Oh so you’re asking for Trunks’s sake?” she glared back “How gratuitous of you to pass on the message”

“I’m worried too, you insufferable woman!” his hands were fists, digging into his own palms “But you won’t hear it from me, so what else can I do?!”

She stilled. She sighed again, exhausted, and sat on the bed with a huff.

“I thought you said no dirty uniforms on the bed” he stayed standing, somewhat away from her.

He didn’t know how to tread with her in these things. She was normally the one nagging about worries of this kind, yet he had to act.

If something happened to her, his entire world would collapse under him. He knew it, repeatedly, increasingly, as danger found them.

With Buu, when he came back to the living world to find her already dead. With Beerus, when he saw the God slapping her in front of him. With Zamasu, when she threw herself at danger to help their future son. With his fight against Top and how he embraced his feelings for her and their family as his greatest strength.

He knew what it would feel like to lose her and the mere thought of what it meant to him terrified him more than any danger he had faced.

“Fine” she stood up, unzipping her overall as she moved towards the bathroom “Give me a couple minutes to come back to life a bit, I’m too sleep deprived for this conversation”

“That’s exactly my point” he argued as she flipped him off on her way out.

He fell on the bed, closed his eyes and let his senses focus on the sound of the shower and her ki calming down. He had grown used to grasping her ki as an anchor, a way to ground himself when his nightmares were too strong or his fears crept up on him.

Vegeta listened as the shower stopped and heard her making her way to the bedroom, the smell of her soap mixing with some immovable faint scent of engine grease.

“Did you fall asleep on me?” he felt her climbing on the bed, sitting beside him.  

“You wish” he answered, not opening his eyes “I’m not letting this go”

“When have you _ever_ let something go?” she sighed “Fine then, let’s talk”

The fact that she didn’t even try to dissuade him with seduction was an indication of how tired she actually was. He sat up and looked at her, a towel on her hands trying to dry her short hair, a pair of shorts and one of those t-shirts with some silly science pun only she and her father enjoyed.

Out of all the fancy dresses she wore, the delicate lingerie she owned, the fashionable clothing she collected, this was how he found her at her most authentic. This and with her lab uniforms.

When had he become such a sentimentalist?

“It’s too late, you need sleep, so I’m gonna cut down to the chase” he turned to her fully, his eyes firmly set on her “ _Why_ are you pushing yourself so hard?”

He saw the emotions reflected in her eyes.

First, she frowned in that way that felt like thunder before the storm. She wanted to argue. Possibly negate that she was doing it, start a fight to dissuade him from pursuing the matter further.

Then her eyes softened. The faint wrinkles in her eyes relaxed, her body too tired for an argument that would end in both of them at odds for the reminder of the week.

She then looked at him with fondness. Her deep blue eyes were glossy with affection, thankful for the worry, even if it was too ill-timed and bothersome for her to deal with.

She sighed with resignation.

“You know how we have a board”

The peril in her words as she said them reminded him of that time when he had found her in the lab, angrily building a weapon as she narrated how she was going to enter the next meeting with a flamethrower and laugh on their scorched corpses.

It had taken him a _lot_ of self-restraint not to let her do just that, as he imagined her with the cape of a Saiyan Queen, demanding the respect of her subjects.

He merely nodded, to let her continue.

“My dad has been working for decades and now he’s clearly too old for some things” she kept frowning, staring at the bedspread as she spoke “His sight isn’t the best, he needs assistants to make things work and he can’t be bending over or operating heavy machinery anymore”

She started plucking wayward threads from the bedspread, to distract herself from her feelings.

“Still, nobody on the board has ever suggested him to retire” she continued “Nobody has questioned his ability to keep making things, or judge his brain in any way unable to keep working”

Vegeta felt he was at a loss and had no idea where the conversation was going. Wasn’t that a good thing? He couldn’t imagine her father ceasing work, it was his passion, as much as it was hers, and without him beside her, nobody would be able to follow her train of thought as well as and fast as he did.

“Do you know what happened when I went back to work after having Bra?” she looked at him, her frown impassive “They asked _me_ to retire”

“What?!” Vegeta felt the need to insist her to build that flamethrower after all “ _Why_?!”

“They said that, at my age and being a mother again, I _surely_ wanted to spend more time with my family, do all those wifely duties I might want to _really_ focus on” she smirked “You know, because I could be unreliable, with my hormones and my motherly senses and all that”

“That’s ridiculous, you father also has two kids of his own...” Vegeta was at a loss again.

“But I’m a woman, Vegeta” she sentenced, as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

It had taken some time for Vegeta to understand the dynamics of Earth when it came to gender roles. For Saiyans, roles weren’t assigned with gender identity but with a class system. And that was also faulty, considering he tended to be always one step behind someone of a lower class. Not that he wanted to remember it.

It sounded ridiculous that some people whose only input in her and her father’s company was moving money from one place to the next had a say in what she could or couldn’t do.

“What the hell has that got to do with anything?” it wasn’t his most eloquent interjection, but it was an honest one.

“I want to prove to them that I can be my best self even while being a mother” she sentenced, determined “If I can’t produce in the way I used to, they’ll pester me with their fake concern, their only intention being moving me from a position of power so they can deal with my dad without me in between, because I’m the one they can’t easily convince of their bullshit”

So this was about _politics_ . That was something Vegeta _did_ know about.

“You don’t do yourself any favors by weakening yourself either, Bulma” he crossed his arms “If the pricks want you out, they can use that against you, and probably want to, you’re helping _them_ by overexerting”

“But if I don’t produce results…”

“That’s your mistake”

He saw her stiffen at that, at his claim that she had made a mistake. It was the worst he could tell her.

“You don’t work for them, they work for you”

“Well, technically, with shareholders…”

“ _They_ work for _you_ ” he sentenced, defiant “If the company went to shit tomorrow, if actions fell or there was a fucking alien invasion that blew Capsule Corp to pieces…”

“A scenario you’re familiar with…”

“Who would rebuild it?” he insisted “If things went to utmost shit, who would have the knowledge and the determination to start all over again?”

She stayed silent and he knew she was at odds because claiming her rightful place as the saving grace of her own empire would be giving him the upper hand in the argument.

And _he_ was supposed to be the prideful one.

“If the company disappeared tomorrow...” he continued, not needing her to say what he knew she was agreeing with in silence “those little asshats would be lost in the mud, unable to do a thing, while you would be back in a lab, rebuilding your father’s legacy one bolt and screw at a fucking time”

He let the image settle in her head, his speech drenched in all the pride he felt for the work she did, for the strength with which she reigned.

“So actions and papers be damned, without you they have nothing” he continued “ _They_ work for _you_ ” he sneered “Don’t let the pawns believe they have power over you because they _don’t_ ”

He thought of the things he imagined when he was tied in dark chambers, being tortured by Frieza, as a representative of his entire race. The ideas he repeated in his head as the pain lashed on his back, drowning Frieza’s laughter in a voice that sounded like his father’s, reminding him who he was and the power that laid inside him.

“Don’t let them destroy you, Bulma”

He repeated those words he had said to himself so many times, as he was pushed aside and seen as weak for the tail he had around his waist and the history of the people he carried in his soul.

She must have sensed his tension because she closed the gap between them and nestled herself in his personal space. Her arms went around his neck, her head leaning towards his, her body fitting in the space between his legs.

“Thank you” she said, unabashedly, her deep blue eyes staring at the darkness of his soul, and he felt that surviving had meaning.

His arms went around her frame, bringing her closer to him, and he breathed the perfume of her moist hair as he leaned his head on hers.

“You are my home, Bulma” he whispered “I _care_ ”

As they settled to sleep, her still in his arms, she leaned forward to kiss him, drowsily, imperfectly, whispering an “I love you” and caressing it clumsily over his lips.

He dared to faintly respond, in the darkness of night, and whisper and “I love you too” he most often quieted. He saw her smile herself to sleep upon hearing it and he couldn’t help smiling too.

Vegeta remembered once more, before falling asleep, that he was at his strongest when he was in her arms.

**Author's Note:**

> So, this happened after finishing part 3 of DBZ Abridged episode 60. I mean how good is Abridged, am I right? 
> 
> I included my headcanon of Piccolo being an ace/aro icon (is it a headcanon? or is it canon compliant?) and I wanted to showcase a bit of the friendship Krillin and Bulma have, which I think isn't normally showcased. I feel like they have an understanding in many things, since they have stuff in common and they went through a lot together. 
> 
> Even if it started as just that, I ended up going further with this and the part of Trunks and Bulma talking was my favorite to write. I have a LOT of feelings about Trunks's characterization in Super and GT, which I'm not gonna get into here because nobody cares, but I wanted to show some of that in this conversation, I hope it doesn't suck too much. 
> 
> English isn't my first language and all mistakes are my own fault. Thanks so much for reading, if you did, I really appreciate it ♥


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